Using a camera to take photographs is a popular and widely shared activity, particularly during travelling and sightseeing; however, there are some problems to be overcome. First, a person who holds a camera cannot take his own picture. If he wants his picture to be taken before a landscape or other background, he has to ask another person to trigger the camera for him, or to use a tripod and an automatic shutter and timer. When travelling alone, a person cannot take his own picture in the first situation. In the second situation, it is still difficult to make sharp focus or good perspective by using a tripod to take one's own picture, if no other reference object is nearby. There is another problem when taking a portrait against a landscape background; it is difficult to strike a proper balance between the portrait and the landscape images in terms of size and focus.
To take a clear and big enough portrait, the depth of field has to be short, but the background image will be out of focus and become blurred. A long focus lens may be used for improving the aforesaid problem in the background image, but the background will be confined to a narrow scope. On the other hand, a wide scope and clear background picture may be obtained by using a longer depth of field; then, the portrait in the whole picture will become small because the person has to stand far away from the camera in order to get a sharp focus.
Currently, there are some image combining techniques and equipment available. One of them is to project a slide on a screen as a background picture and to have the person positioned in front of the screen; then, let the images of the background and the person pass through the camera lens and focus on the film to produce a combined image. This has to be done in a photo studio furnished with screen and other bulky equipments.
Another of said techniques is to use the darkroom technique to create the montage effect for the images to be combined. However, all of the aforesaid techniques are inconvenient or not practical to an amateur photo-taking, particularly during travelling time.